Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

The US will never be knocked off top of that list. We are about fifth or sixth per capita. The most important thing about those OECD figures is getting to the point where there is an understanding of whether they are indicating that the resource level in health for the outputs is too high or not. The Deputy will not want to listen to me talk about this but most of the commentators, including the Library and Research Service of the Houses of the Oireachtas, have urged caution as to how we use those figures. The per capitafigures may be more reliable than the GDP figures. We know the GDP figures flatter Ireland. We talk about gross national income and so on and so forth. There are lots of statistics which place Ireland at different rankings. Some of them place us towards the top. We are fifth, sixth or seventh according to the OECD. There is also a statistic on the rate of growth in public healthcare spend in the OECD from something like 2008 to 2017 and Ireland is at 0.8%, which is 32nd in the OECD. Does that counteract all the other arguments? I do not know but I urge caution when looking at those figures.